


The In-Between Space

by notearchiver



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: snape_potter, EWE, M/M, Memory Loss, POV Second Person, Summer of Snarry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-03
Updated: 2014-01-03
Packaged: 2018-01-07 08:46:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1117880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notearchiver/pseuds/notearchiver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hit by an <i>Obliviate</i> that is only partially reversed, Harry lives in the in-between space and waits for Severus' visits. Then, one day in July, something changes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The In-Between Space

**Author's Note:**

> Written for snape_potter's 2012 Summer of Snarry.
> 
>  **Title:** The In-between Space  
>  **Author:** notearchiver  
>  **Rating:** PG  
>  **Word count:** 930  
>  **Content/Warning(s):** second-person pov, angst, EWE, memory loss

* * *

\-----------

They say that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, but they're wrong. What doesn't kill you doesn't kill you. That's all you get.

\-----------

Maybe it had been a week, maybe two, maybe even a month. Perhaps (you don't want to think it, but you do) even a year. It's hard to tell in hospitals.

You live in an in-between space: most of the time everything is hazy as if you're just awakening from a dose of Dreamless Sleep; other times you can hear the healers discussing your case, but you can't tell them that it's rude to talk about you when you're lying in bed just a quaffle throw away because your mouth doesn't seem to be connected to your brain.

\-----------

The fear becomes as pervasive as a dementor's presence, and it only goes away when he's with you. Because if you can understand but you can't respond you're just a bystander to your own nightmare. You're less than a ghost.

\-----------

It wasn't a dark and stormy night when it happened. It should have been, but, as you had learned when you were seventeen and spent almost a year living in a tent, Weather is a capricious mistress at the best of times.

It actually happened on one of those summer evenings where everything felt sepia-toned and where anything and everything you did was so sublime that in retrospect it could only go wrong.

You figure it wouldn't be as bad if you had been injured in the field, but you're just an Auror trainee and there's nothing glorious about being hit by a stray spell during practice.

\-----------

One minute you were thinking about how tomorrow was your birthday and how good it would be to see Severus that night; how you hadn't seen him the past three days because he was trying to invent a potion to save that girl in St. Mungo's.

One minute you were thinking about how right his scarred skin felt against your body; how he never was able to tell you that he loved you, and how his kisses said it for him.

The next moment you were enveloped in blankness. It was worse than the in-between space you're in now because it was the utter absence of anything, not even like new parchment (because that has variation in colour), but like muggle stationary's vast whiteness.

Then there was nothing.

\-----------

 _Hit by a stray Obliviate_ , the healers say. _Weak enough it could have been reversed easily by a professional, but some idiot tried to fix it himself._

 _Cast by Ronald Weasley_ , the nurses gossip. _Imagine that!_

You decide you're glad you didn't end up like Lockhart.

You try not to think that it was your best mate who locked you in your mind.

\-----------

At first Severus seems to live next to your bed. You wake and hear his melodic voice reading you _Potions Quarterly_ and _On the Restrictions of Jobbernoll Feathers in Memory Potions_.

As what passes for time elapses, Severus is only be your bed on mornings and evenings.

Sometimes he comes in smelling of burnt sulfur and pickled caterpillars. On these days he sits quietly, rough hands caressing your hands, your body.

Sometimes he comes in smelling of caramel and aloe and olive oil. On these days he reads you quidditch scores and complains about students. On these days his voice reminds you of when you walked through St. Petersburg together, the rich sunlight glinting off the cobblestone streets as the August sun set.

\-----------

The evenings are your favourite time. In the evenings he sits and speaks to you and you imagine that you're happy.

As you drift in and out, you realise that imagining doesn't take that much work.

\-----------

 _His birthday_ , the nurses clamour. _Mr Snape has requested that he and Mr Potter not be interrupted tomorrow._

Falling into the deep, you promise yourself that tomorrow you'll fight the haze for as long as possible. If not for you, for Severus.

\-----------

You wake to black eyes gazing intently at your face, then a potion being poured down your throat and the soft incantation of a spell.

And suddenly your mind feels full and heavy, and you just know it's full with Severus.

\-----------

Images travel in waves of honey and misted sunlight, cascades of feathers and white silk, swells of Severus and Severus and _Severus_.

Severus in your mind and on your lips, the surge pausing only briefly when your lips move in a violent miracle.

Softer, sweeter than that victory is the fact that he still kisses you like he's in love.

\-----------

Evening comes, and as Severus leaves your mind you start drifting, though not as much as you did before the potion and the whispered incantation.

\-----------

_Legilimens._

You remember how you were seventeen and scared and thought the world was going to end if you couldn't be the hero.

( _The martyr_ , Severus whispers).

You remember the blood and the hospital and how you thought the world was going to end if his throat didn't heal and the bleeding didn't stop.

( _But it did_ , Severus reminds you).

You remember how you were aroused and confused thought the world was going to end if he ever stopped kissing you.

( _I won't_ , Severus murmurs).  
You remember the arguments and the blood and—

( _The Obliviate_ , Severus says).

—how you thought the world was going to end.

\-----------

You guess it ended metaphorically, in the sense that one adventure was over and another was just beyond your reach.

( _For now_ ).

\-----------


End file.
